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Every film lover has wished for the same impossible thing: to watch their favourite movie again for the very first time. On Monday, 9 November 2026, a cinema in the Netherlands is going to try to make that wish come true — with hypnosis. Thirty people will sit down in a theatre in The Hague, be hypnotised, and then watch a film they have already seen, in the hope that it feels brand new. The cinema itself admits it might not work at all.
What Pathé REWIND actually is
The experiment is called Pathé REWIND, run by the Dutch cinema chain Pathé at its Buitenhof cinema in The Hague. Thirty film fans were selected to take part, and the event is free. The idea is simple to describe and strange to imagine: a hypnotherapist will try to temporarily suppress the participants' memories of a film, so that when the lights go down they experience its surprises as if for the first time.
The four films on offer are The Matrix, Se7en, La La Land and Interstellar. The group will vote, and one of the four will be screened after the hypnosis session. That choice matters, because each film hides its power in a different place: the nature of reality in The Matrix, the contents of the box in Se7en, the ending of La La Land. If the hypnosis works even partly, those are the moments that should land like a first viewing.
How the night will work
The experiment is led by hypnotherapist Victor Kraemer, whom Pathé describes as having more than 30 years of experience. Participants first complete an individual online session with Kraemer, then a second, group session in the cinema shortly before the screening. Applications for the 30 places closed on 29 October 2026.
What happens next is the honest part of the story, and Pathé has been careful to say it out loud: there is no guarantee the experiment will work. The company describes REWIND as an experiment, not a proven method, and makes no claim that hypnosis can actually make someone forget a film.
What science says about forgetting a film
That caution is well placed, because the science is sceptical. Hypnosis can, in some people, make specific details temporarily harder to recall — a phenomenon sometimes called hypnotic amnesia — but there is no evidence it can erase an entire film from someone's memory. A 2025 review of research on hypnosis and memory, published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, found that hypnosis did not enhance accurate recall in the studies examined.
In other words, the most likely outcome is subtler than the headline promise: a viewer who is relaxed, focused and primed to notice things afresh may genuinely feel the film differently, without actually forgetting any of it. Coverage has also noted possible minor harms cited by medical sources, such as anxiety and disturbed sleep — a reminder that even a playful experiment with the mind deserves informed consent.
Why a cinema is trying this at all
For Pathé, the experiment is also a way of asking what a cinema can offer that a living room cannot. Streaming made every film available at home; cinemas have answered with bigger screens, better sound and event screenings. REWIND pushes that logic to its limit: the one thing no home setup can sell is the feeling of a first viewing. If hypnosis can deliver even a shadow of that feeling, it is a new kind of night out — and if it cannot, the attempt itself has already done its job, because the world is talking about a Monday-night screening in The Hague.
The result, whatever it is, will be known after 9 November. Thirty people will walk out of the Buitenhof either convinced they have just seen a favourite film for the first time, or laughing at a good idea that did not survive contact with their own memories. Either way, the experiment will have answered a question every film lover has asked in private — and the answer is unlikely to be as simple as the poster suggests.
Sources: Consequence, GeekTyrant